Georgia, Stages 3 & 4
It's been a couple days since I've posted and quite a lot has happened. Yesterday's time trial stage finished in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the internet connection there was awful. I had a signal just long enough to download the GPS data, then I think the system became bogged down by the sheer volume of bike racers returning to the hotel and looking for pictures of themselves online.
Personally, I knew there'd be no pictures of myself yesterday because I didn't ride very fast. I thought I did, but I turned out to be mistaken. My confidence was boosted a bit when I found I had the second fastest time and was only 0.25 seconds out of the lead after crossing the line. Of course, the fastest 2/3 of the field had yet to finish at that point, so my position was very short lived.
The course started in a little town called Chickamauga, which was home to one of the major civil war battles. The town seems to take great pride in that. Each team was presented with a gift basket containing, among other things, little plastic replica cannons. There was a full brigade of civil war reenactment guys there firing off cannons and muskets. Each rider's start was signaled by a musket shot. Now, maybe I'm alone in this, but I fail to see how anyone can glorify an event as gruesome and horrible as the American Civil War. Memorialize it, sure, but reenactments seem to celebrate the event. Strange.
But enough of that. The stage finished in Chattanooga, which seemed like a very cool town. It's not often in my travels around the US that I end up in a place where I truly could see myself living, but I thought just that after my 18 or so hours there. It was a very atypical town for the south; the downtown seemed to be truly thriving and there was hardly a stripmall in sight. Our hotel was the old train depot for the town. The lobby was the original ornate terminal, with a few seperate, newer hotel buildings in the back. They had old passenger cars converted to guest rooms as well. None of us stayed in those, but I liked the idea. The major event of note for the evening was that lightning struck a light post in the parking lot and showered the Sierra Nevada team car with broken glass from the bulb.
Today's stage was the first of two big climbing days. I got away in the early break, but Dave Zabriskie of CSC was there as well, so we all knew it was doomed. After the first big climb, there was a series of attacks and three guys got away from our break. I tried making it across to them, but couldn't. After that I was pretty cooked and got dropped on the second to last climb of the day. I ended up finishing with the grupetto at 10:30 down on the leaders. Long day.
On the first climb of the day, while I was up front trying to hang onto the break, there was apparently quite a show back in the field that I missed out on. Some squabbling between Popovych of Discovery and Hunter of Phonak led to a full-on fist fight on the side of the road. I think those two might have discovered the missing ingredient to cycling's ultimate commercial success in the US. Riding with mouth gaurds may prove difficult, though.
That's all for the night. The last two GPS file are up online at ollerend.motionbased.com.
Personally, I knew there'd be no pictures of myself yesterday because I didn't ride very fast. I thought I did, but I turned out to be mistaken. My confidence was boosted a bit when I found I had the second fastest time and was only 0.25 seconds out of the lead after crossing the line. Of course, the fastest 2/3 of the field had yet to finish at that point, so my position was very short lived.
The course started in a little town called Chickamauga, which was home to one of the major civil war battles. The town seems to take great pride in that. Each team was presented with a gift basket containing, among other things, little plastic replica cannons. There was a full brigade of civil war reenactment guys there firing off cannons and muskets. Each rider's start was signaled by a musket shot. Now, maybe I'm alone in this, but I fail to see how anyone can glorify an event as gruesome and horrible as the American Civil War. Memorialize it, sure, but reenactments seem to celebrate the event. Strange.
But enough of that. The stage finished in Chattanooga, which seemed like a very cool town. It's not often in my travels around the US that I end up in a place where I truly could see myself living, but I thought just that after my 18 or so hours there. It was a very atypical town for the south; the downtown seemed to be truly thriving and there was hardly a stripmall in sight. Our hotel was the old train depot for the town. The lobby was the original ornate terminal, with a few seperate, newer hotel buildings in the back. They had old passenger cars converted to guest rooms as well. None of us stayed in those, but I liked the idea. The major event of note for the evening was that lightning struck a light post in the parking lot and showered the Sierra Nevada team car with broken glass from the bulb.
Today's stage was the first of two big climbing days. I got away in the early break, but Dave Zabriskie of CSC was there as well, so we all knew it was doomed. After the first big climb, there was a series of attacks and three guys got away from our break. I tried making it across to them, but couldn't. After that I was pretty cooked and got dropped on the second to last climb of the day. I ended up finishing with the grupetto at 10:30 down on the leaders. Long day.
On the first climb of the day, while I was up front trying to hang onto the break, there was apparently quite a show back in the field that I missed out on. Some squabbling between Popovych of Discovery and Hunter of Phonak led to a full-on fist fight on the side of the road. I think those two might have discovered the missing ingredient to cycling's ultimate commercial success in the US. Riding with mouth gaurds may prove difficult, though.
That's all for the night. The last two GPS file are up online at ollerend.motionbased.com.
3 Comments:
I was a fan at the top of Wolf Pen gap. It was great to see all of you and my 1 chance of the year to see a pro peleton going by... And at a pace where I could see more than a blur of colors- lol! And climbing up Hwy 180 must be a decent leg burner this early in the year!!! Here's wishing you the Best of Success this year!
great job on the break! you the MAN!
I got a picture of you passing Trent Lowe on Thursday -- it's here.
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